Brill Earthly Delights: Economies and Cultures of Food in Ottoman and Danubian Europe, c. 1500-1900: 23 (Balkan Studies Library, 23)

A group of 17 international experts examines continuities and discontinuities in the culinary cultures of the Ottoman Empire, East-Central Europe and the Balkans from the 17th to the 19th century. Review "While anthropologists and ethnographers have developed a "taste" for research on social and cultural dimensions of food long time ago, history of food is a relatively new domain for historians. [...] In sum, this work is a valuable contribution to the study of food and the formation of regional and national identities through material culture, symbolic rituals, stratified consumption, and cultural representations. It provides a contextual look at redefining the notion of prosperity through social attachments to food. Furthermore, the book contributes to de-centering the research on west European cuisine. By offering such transnational readings to a variety of social contexts involving shared cuisine, the authors promote not only academic dialogue, but also address social interconnectedness in a novel way and suggest new venues for research." Evguenia Davidova in the Slavic Review 2019, pp 821-822 "Earthly Delights may be considered the first in-depth volume on the topic, gathering important contributions on culinary practices, types of food, cookbooks, attitudes to nutrition, and regional patterns of influence in southeastern Europe". Laurenţiu Rădvan, University of Iaşi, in: Studii şi Materiale de Istorie Medie (2018) About the Author Angela Jianu, Ph.D. (2004, University of York, UK), has taught modern European history at the Universities of Warwick and Oxford. She is the author of A Circle of Friends: Romanian Revolutionaries and Political Exile, 1840-1859 (Brill, 2011). Violeta Barbu, Ph.D. (1997, 2008, University of Bucharest), was Professor of Religious Anthropology and Senior Research Fellow at the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest. She has published widely on the early modern history of Romania and is the editor of Documenta Romaniae Historica (1998-2017, 11 vols.).